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Why Americans can't speak (or write in) English properly.
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Post by
pelf
Since Gryphon apparently decided today was a good day to lock only one of the posts in this forum that got derailed after the topic was addressed, here's another thread to discuss this in.
Note to moderators (as you seem to be paying attention): I'm posting this here as I'm interested in discussing it with
these
people, not with people from another forum.
So yea, why is it? I think it's because Americans are not given any reason at all to value proper composition. Like anything else in the US educational system, we're taught that we should learn things and retain them just long enough to be tested and then forget them. Once you reach the real world, nobody seems to be penalized or finger-wagged for bad composition either. Some of the crap that comes out of upper management at my workplace is phenomenally egregious. The fact that it's going to be sent to 500 people doesn't seem to faze them into simply re-reading it. Heck, maybe they do re-read it and they're too dense to know they've made mistakes. Homophonic errors are, after all, not caught by Word's spell check feature.
So, while the rest of the world is taught that they need to learn English to interact in the global economy and while they learn it incidentally through music and movies, we learn that nobody gives a crap if we don't write so good and never see an example to the contrary in the famed "real world" we finally enter into at some point.
Post by
Wanderingfox
I honestly think that there are several contributing factors to the problem. Firstly, what Americans speak is
not
English; it's American. This is an important distinction to make simply on the basis of the fact that Americans have changed so much of the language to suit their needs. They find something tiresome, or tedious, so instead of accommodating accepted grammatical standards, they 'wing it' and use whatever happens to be easier at the time.
Specifically, this brings me to point number two, which is the fact that Americans are increasingly lazy. So much so in fact, that they seek to find shortcuts wherever possible even if it costs them some poise or intelligence. Unfortunately, this has the rather serious side effect of things like "wassup" and "cuz" ("what is up?" and "because" respectfully) that are used as shortcuts that have a similar effect on language as dropping a white shirt in the dirt.
Lastly, you have the fact that America is not a nation of a single race. England is, by and large, populated solely by the English. America, however, is much more of a cultural mixing pot, which leads to vocabulary and slang being adopted from other languages at a significantly higher rate than you would see in England.
All in all, American English suffers from the simple fact that the people that speak it want to get their point across as quickly as possible and they don't really care what gets in way grammatically.
Note: I am an American. I speak American-English, and I'm ashamed to say that I actually found writing the above post far more difficult than it should have been. That's not to say that I don't have a solid grasp on the English language, but rather that trying to write a grammatically correct post that is free of slang was significantly more taxing mentally than it would have been to just 'wing it'.
Post by
335609
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Wildhorn
Now if only someone would answer on this forum in incomplete words with improper vowel usage, punctuation, and sentence structure.
We would report them. Us, Macro forum users, we do not like trolls and I am pretty pleased that so far, they all stayed out of it.
English is not my first language and I am not American, but I come from Quebec and our "french" is to us what English is to American... not what it was anymore. And I would say that it is even worst than American->English. You can put a Quebecois and a French in the same room, and they can really not understand each others. Also, some of our words (the same damn word, FFS) have completely different meaning. Like "Bonne" (which in English translate "Good") for a Quebecois means that she is good at something, while for a Frenchy, it means it is a @#$%. :O
Just like Americans, we have tons of different cultures in Quebec and we integrate their words rather quickly to our own language. But I think the main reason of all that, it is because
humans by nature are very lazy.
Anyway, it can't be worst than one of my friend language. It is like 40% of i-forgot-which-language than the resting 60% is coming from like 10 other languages (english, french, spanish, russian, etc). It is funny because I speak 3 languages and I can understand about 1/3 of what he says when he speaks it (sometimes it makes very no sense at all) :)
Post by
Vlet
people aren't getting dumber; there are just more of them on the internet so you're noticing it more.
Post by
Wildhorn
people aren't getting dumber; there are just more of them on the internet so you're noticing it more.
Hmmmm
Post by
426948
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Robotusch
And this went in the UI & Macros forum because...?
Post by
426948
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Wildhorn
And this went in the UI & Macros forum because...?
Because people like you and iSylvir normally do not roam here?
Post by
NHDriver4
This is the most ridiculous posting ever. Not surprised coming from someone that has a user name starting with a p....
Stereotypical moron.
Post by
Mike
Not surprised coming from someone that has a user name starting with a p....
Stereotypical moron.
what....... ? O_o
Post by
Wikipedia
And this went in the UI & Macros forum because...?
Well, where did you want it? No category matches this thread, and since Pelf wanted to talk with people in this part of the forum (since the original post was here) he posted it here. Logic.
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
224056
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Silversmith
Whoever asked for your intrusion? If you haven't got any nice things to say don't say anything.
But then again, the whole thread isn't exactly 'nice'.
As for the original 'learn, pass test, forget' statement: but that's the way it is everywhere. Things you use in your day to day life stick, others get hidden beneath a thick layer of dust.
For example, high school chemistry. I more or less knew it perfectly back then, straight 10's. I needed that knowledge to pass exams with good scores, and have a shiny report to show at my university of choice. Now I'm CS student working in web development. All I can tell you off the top of my head is the formula of ethanol. After couple weeks of refreshing I could get back to that level (like I had to with physics recently). Now, this very minute? Not a chance.
The same with languages. I just speak them. I can't recite any laws governing the forming of sentences in my native latvian or the ten billion different tenses of german. Ask me whether A or B is more in line with 'proper' english, and I will just stand there with a profound look of confusion on my face. Sure, I knew it all back in high school, but not now. However, that doesn't hold me from expressing my thoughts in any of them. Well, maybe german. I hate that language.
My brain is not a repository of every bit of information I've ever read, and I don't feel worse off for that. If I need to know the date the hundred years war ended, there's google for that.
Post by
Wanderingfox
And this went in the UI & Macros forum because...?
Thank you for perpetuating the point that people are lazy...
Note to moderators (as you seem to be paying attention): I'm posting this here as I'm interested in discussing it with these people, not with people from another forum.
Clearly he wishes to have the discussion with the people in this forum even if it's off topic. That really isn't that unusual. In fact, it happens all the time on forums all over the place. For example, the official WoW Customer Support forums have off topic posts at least once a day, if not more.
Well, I think as an American myself, you Sir, are the illiterate one. First off; I understand your need to talk to the 'UI & Macros' forum, rather than any other forum, but is this saying that everyone here is more intelligent than the rest of the forum? And what basis do you have on this claim? Secondly; Let's think here. This all seems a bit flamey. Not only are you insulting a single person, you're insulting a large group of individuals, which plainly violates the rules of this forum. So sir, I implore you to rethink where you post certain threads, who the audience will be, and what types of people you target with your rants.
(P.S. I'm a freshman in High School, and I'm pretty sure the only lack of intelligence I ever see from the English speaking folk that are so prevalent here in the Midwest is on Facebook. If you're going to blame anything, blame that, because your claims rely in unrelated lies. And If this doesn't impact you at all. Ispeul gud.)
"I'm a freshman in High School" then you should understand the proper use of a semicolon? I'm not going to sit here and pick through the grammatical problems of your post just to prove my point, but I think you'll be able to grasp it regardless.
As far as it being 'insulting,' I don't see anyone else except yourself getting upset about it. Perhaps, just perhaps, you're the one adding that tone to his post rather than him? I take it you're referring to "Vulgar, obscene, or otherwise inappropriate material will be deleted immediately," when you state that he's violating the forum rules? I don't see how his post is vulgar, obscene, or inappropriate in any way, shape, or form. Also, just for the record, the forum rules also state "These forums are English only. This also means you need to keep up a certain standard of grammar and spelling."
He
did
think about where he posted it and who his audience would be, and that's
why
it was posted here rather than in General or Randomness. He wanted to have the discussion with the specific people in this forum because we often end up derailing threads with linguistics discussion. Wildhorn, pelf, myself (albeit barely), and a few others all speak multiple languages, and we often end up having little side-discussions while helping people, or after they've been helped and the thread is no longer being used for its original purpose. I think a single thread for such discussion is actually beneficial when compared to littering dozens of posts with it.
In regards to your post script, you probably do not notice it because you're in the age group that does it the most. I'm not trying to belittle you, or anything of that nature, and facebook is definitely a major cause of the problem (as is Twitter), but just because you do not see it around you does not mean it's not occurring. You can look at just about any internet forum and see it. You can see it in spoken word as well if you actually stop and listen to the words people use when they talk rather than just taking in the meaning. Just a suggestion, but pick up an older work of literature (1984, The Great Gatsby, anything really.) and read it. Then take a look at how people write (especially on forums). You'll notice that a large majority of people simply don't take the time to write like that anymore, and that is the core topic of pelf's post and not that he was deliberately trying to insult anyone. That, and him being American as well, I certainly hope that he would not insult himself.
note:
A
semicolon
is used to connect two independent statements when a full stop (a period) is too long of a pause. In other words, "I like the rain. It's soothing." turns into "I like the rain; it's soothing." The first quote seems jagged and unrefined because there is a long pause between the sentences "I like the rain. <breath> It's soothing." The second quote, however, is much more fluid because the pause is only as long as if the semicolon were a comma. It can also be used to separate a list of groups of multiple words from the sentence. For example, "I like to do a lot of things; riding my bike, playing soccer, and reading books."
A semicolon does not connect a dependent and independent clause.
Post by
Wildhorn
@Fox: Would not a coma be better than a semilicon? I always used semilicon when I was listing something or using 2 spells in the same /cast macro :P
This thread now is officially about macro, it is no more offtopic :P
Post by
Wanderingfox
It depends on the situation, but for the most part they serve different purposes. A semicolon, in terms of connecting sentences, can only be used where a period can be used. That is to say it connects two separate clauses, but it cannot connect a dependent and independent clause. A semicolon is basically a hybrid between a comma and a period (just look at the symbol). It's more than a comma, but not quite a period.
A comma, however, is used to connect dependent and independent clauses because it implies that the two statements are dependent on each other, or are otherwise connected with a conjunction. For example, "It's raining out, but I like it anyway." uses a comma while "It's raining out; I like it anyway." does not.
edit:
In response to your edit, the semicolon still has a similar usage in macros. It represents the separation of two separate, but related statements while the comma is just a continuation of the same statement. XD
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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